We (my physicist/farmer husband & me & the dogs & the cats) moved from sprawling Houston, TX to a small, but useless farm in Florida. Then the donkey moved in. He was lonely, so the goats came. & then some horses, some more dogs, chickens, cockatiels, more cats, new horses. You get the picture.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Something Yellow

I made this quilt primarily from scraps from a quilt I made my mother. I made that quilt to match her room, which is primarily soft blues & corals, as is that quilt. Then I took those scraps, mixed them with other scraps (the leftover triangles from churn dash blocks, if you must know), & still more scraps & I am not sure how it happened... because I have never made... but I got Something Yellow.

The block is a famous one, if only I could remember the name! It is a 9-patch in which each patch of the nine patch is made up of a 4-patch of 1/2 squares triangles, except for three across the center, corner-to-corner in a tic-tac-toe style. Yes, the name of the block would be easier. Soooo I made nine of them (9-patch again) & they make a good sized lap/nap quilt.

The back of the quilt is a surprisingly similar color-way: a goldy brown background with fleur de lis of yellows, oranges & powder blues. I have no idea why I bought it, if you asked me I would have said it was not my thing at all, but apparently it very much IS. As you can see, the quilt back precisely matches my dog.

As for the quilting: because it was made from scraps & because I elected to go borderless a certain amount of yanking around was needed to get this sucker to lay flat. As a result, while the whole thing is pretty damn close to square (I swear, it is just being floaty in that picture up there), there are hardly any straight lines. I was sick to death of all over meander designs (they start to get me in the neck), So it was quilted from one corner to the other in lines that are neither straight nor evenly spaced.

I do not care so much how not accurate the parts are as the quilt itself turned out just fine. So just fine that I have started another one (not with scraps but with fabric actually chosen for it) & I plan to quilt in the same side-to-side-but-otherwise-no-thoughts pattern.

dear useless ranch ( what a fun name)I love your quilt- I think the block name might be "birds in the air" but I am not sure.You may enjoy looking for a book called Liberated Quilting II by Gwen Marston( She has just done this second version or a pair of books by her and Freddy Moran called Collaborative Quilting and Colloborative Friends. The books are rich with color and have quilt patterns thatbend the quilting rules . You will love them if you are not a traditionalist (or even if you are,) you may want to explore some alternative forms of quiltmaking. There are also some wonderful scrap quilting books out there- Do check out Bonnie Hunter's website called quiltville.com. She has many free patterns on her site as well as two quilt books available for purchase. Happy quilting! Regards from a Western Canadian Quilter,Annahttp://quiltmomsjourney.blogspot.com/